We have seen a flurry of startup acquisitions by Google in the last year or so. The company has apparently set its eyes on the future of robotics. The latest in the list is the acquisition of Deepmind, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup.

The acquisition of Deepmind may simply be an attempt by the search giant to bolster support for other robotics startups it has acquired in the recent past. Deepmind doesn’t seem too focused on the robotics hardware, rather the company has a focus on ‘general purpose learning algorithms.’

Hazarding a guess, one would say that Google may have bought Deepmind to help with the research on the robotics hardware that it now owns, thanks to its other acquisitions. The projects that Deepmind had been working on, leading to this acquisition, involved e-commerce, games and other intelligent simulations.

Google may have shifted its focus to robotics but the company also has a long-standing interest in AI. From a holistic view point, AI and robotics go side by side. If Google decides to become a robotics giant in tomorrow’s world, which seems likely at this point, the company will need the latest in AI to help it create functioning robots.

At the same time, advanced AI technologies will also help Google with the huge ecosystem that it currently sustains, ranging from online search to social networking and a mobile OS.

So Deepmind acquisition should be seen as simply another part of the whole that Google is trying to create at this point. The acquisition of the startup has apparently cost $400 million, although Google hasn’t confirmed the deal yet.